Tehran: Iran’s Supreme Court has accepted a protester’s appeal against death sentence for allegedly damaging public property during ongoing anti-hijab protests.
On October 4, 25-year-old Sahand Noor Mohammadzadeh was arrested and sentenced to death two months later on the charge of “waging war against God” for allegedly attempting to break the guardrail of a highway and setting fire to a rubbish bin.
However, Noor Mohammadzadeh has rejected the accusations, saying that he was forced to admit his guilt.
On December 12, he started a hunger strike in protest against his sentence.
“Sahand Noormohammadzadeh’s appeal was accepted in the Supreme Court. The aforementioned appeal against the decision issued by the Supreme Court, was found to be correct and the appeal decision was requested in accordance with the provision of Clause 4 Paragraph B of Article 469 of the Violation Procedure Law and the case was referred to the Revolutionary Court for consideration,” judiciary’s news agency, Mizan tweeted on Saturday.
On December 25, Iranian rapper Saman Saidi Yasin’s death sentence appeal was accepted by the Supreme Court, however, the same sentence was confirmed for another protester Mohammad Ghobadlo.
Iran has so far executed at least two people in cases related to the protests.
Amnesty International has warned that more than two dozen more people could potentially be facing execution soon.
Iran has been rocked by sweeping protests since September 16, over the death of a 22-year-old woman, Mahsa Amini, in the custody of Iran’s morality police.
Her death has since ignited anger over several issues, including the restrictions imposed on personal freedoms and strict rules regarding women’s clothing, as well as the living and economic crisis that Iranians suffer from, not to mention the strict laws imposed by the regime and its political and religious composition in general.
